German lessons: Getting the right level of tuition

[lethargic_man]

After a year and a half of trying to teach myself German from a book, and learning lots of grammar and vocab but not really managing to improve my speed of parsing spoken German or of thinking in German, I started German lessons last night.

Possibly it's wrong to generalise from a single lesson, but there was no German grammar taught in the lesson. However, that's not a problem, as I can continue to teach myself that from my book. What there was was an hour and a half of listening to the teacher talk, at around the limit of the speed I can follow, and occasionally saying things myself.

At the end, the teacher asked me how happy I was with the level. (I'd previously done a short written assessment, scoring 16 out of 20, which was right at the top end of their B1.2 slot; however, I'd pointed out that as it was all written German, I probably scored considerably higher than I would have done on a spoken/aural test.)

I said I could understand about 80% of what he was saying, and about 40% of the material on the CD he played, which was way too fast for me. (Possibly I should have added that that 40% was after he played each piece three times, the third time a few sentences at a time: the first time, I understood 5%.) He said I could try out the class below if I wanted, but he thought I should probably stick with his class.

What do you think? I suppose listening to lots of German is what I'm there for, and if I dropped a class maybe I would find it too easy and not pushing at my limits. OTOH it's not worth it if I can't understand what's being said. But I could understand most of it, so maybe I should stay as I am.

Comments

[liv]

In general it's worthwhile for language learning to be the weakest student in a class that's too advanced rather than the best student in a class that's too easy. In this situation I think this is especially true because your main priority is to get lots of experience of listening to German at normal spoken speed, as you say you can learn the grammar and vocab on your own. In general, "immersion" types of language learning are most effective (see for example the Ulpan system), so I think it's highly likely that your comprehension will improve pretty rapidly after a few sessions of the more advanced class.

The caveat I have which means I'm not recommending this wholeheartedly is that you personally have real problems with confidence in language learning. So perhaps you would be happier in an easier class where you'd excel and therefore feel good about yourself.

[green_knight]

Bleib wo Du bist ;-)

If the teacher is happy with your level, and you're not feeling completely overwhelmed, I'd say stay, because you're only just starting out. If you understand everything, I'd say the material is too easy; not getting things and working them out from the context and looking them up is part of the learning process; expect to put in additional work to get the best out of the lessons.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

If you can understand 80% of what he's saying, I'd stick it out. I expect you'll come up to speed quite quickly.